Raising Bilingual Children: Why Your Home Language Matters

Many families in the UK speak a language at home that is not English. For Indian families, it might be Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Bengali or Urdu, often with English mixed in and sometimes with more than one home language in the same house. Polish, Arabic, Somali, Romanian and many others are just as common in UK classrooms.

A common worry goes something like this: “Should we switch to English at home so our child doesn’t fall behind at school?”

The research points clearly the other way. A strong home language is an asset for a child’s learning, their sense of identity and their relationships with family. English will come, especially for children who live and go to school in the UK. The home language is the one that needs looking after.

What happens when children learn two languages

Children are capable of learning more than one language from birth. Krista Byers-Heinlein and Casey Lew-Williams, in a 2013 review titled “Bilingualism in the Early Years: What the Science Says”, summarise studies showing that bilingual babies can tell their languages apart from very early on, and that bilingual children reach major milestones, such as first words and first word combinations, within the same broad age range as children learning one language.

What can look different is vocabulary in each language counted separately. A bilingual toddler may know “cat” in English and “dog” only in Marathi, because those are the words they hear in each setting. If you count only one language, their vocabulary can look smaller. Barbara Zurer Pearson and colleagues showed back in 1993 that when you count words across both languages, bilingual toddlers’ vocabularies are comparable to those of children learning one language.

This matters for parents and for professionals. A child’s English on its own does not show everything they can do.

Common myths about bilingualism

“Two languages will confuse my child”

Children do mix languages. A sentence might start in Hindi and finish in English. This is called code-mixing or code-switching, and it is a normal part of bilingual development. Adults who speak two languages do it all the time. It shows the child is using everything they have to get their message across. It is not a sign of confusion.

“Bilingualism causes language delay”

Speech and language therapists are clear on this. Guidance written for the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists by Carol Stow and Sean Pert states that bilingualism does not cause communication disorders and is not itself a disorder. Bilingual children should not have higher rates of speech and language difficulties than monolingual children.

That cuts both ways. If a bilingual child is having real difficulties, those difficulties will show up in both languages. A child who is struggling in English but chatting happily and fluently at home in Gujarati is probably still learning English. A child who is struggling in both deserves a closer look, and being bilingual should never be a reason to “wait and see”.

“If my child has SEND, we should drop the home language”

Families of children with autism, Down syndrome or a speech and language disorder are sometimes told to use only English. The RCSLT guidance takes a different view: for therapy, it recommends working in the home language, because children with a well-developed home language are better placed to learn additional languages. Cutting a child off from the language spoken by their grandparents and wider family can also cost them important relationships.

“We should speak English at home to help with school”

If your English is not your strongest language, switching can mean your child hears less rich, less fluent language overall. Children benefit most from hearing a lot of warm, varied, natural talk. You will usually give that best in the language you think, joke and tell stories in.

“Bilingual children are cleverer”

You may also read the opposite myth: that bilingual children have big thinking advantages. Some studies have reported benefits for attention and switching between tasks, but later work, including a 2013 study by Kenneth Paap and Zachary Greenberg, failed to find consistent advantages. The honest summary is that the evidence is mixed. Keeping a home language is worthwhile for communication, culture and family, and that is reason enough.

Practical habits for bilingual families

There is no single right method. The RCSLT guidance notes that the “one parent, one language” approach, where each parent sticks to one language, is often not practical and is not necessary. What matters more is that children hear plenty of each language in meaningful situations.

Some approaches families use:

• Language by place or time: home language at home, English outside. Or the home language at weekends and at mealtimes.
• Language by person: grandparents speak the home language, a parent speaks English.
• Mixed, with some protected time: many families mix naturally, and keep certain routines, such as bedtime stories or video calls with relatives, firmly in the home language.

Everyday ideas

• Read and tell stories in your home language. If books are hard to find, tell stories from your childhood, or describe the pictures in an English book in your own language.
• Sing. Lullabies, nursery rhymes, film songs, bhajans or whatever your family enjoys. Songs carry rhythm and vocabulary in a way children remember.
• Cook together and talk through it. Kitchens are full of words: ingredients, quantities, smells, actions.
• Keep up video calls with grandparents and relatives. For many children, family is the main reason a language feels worth speaking.
• Celebrate festivals and family occasions in the home language. Diwali, Eid, Navratri, Pongal, Christmas, weddings: these give children a reason to use words they do not hear every day.
• Let children answer in English if they choose, and keep replying in your home language. Understanding is valuable even when speaking lags behind.
• Find other children who share your language, through community groups, places of worship or Saturday schools.

The back-and-forth conversation that supports early language works in any language. Serve and Return explains why those everyday exchanges matter so much.

When English starts at nursery or school

Children who mostly hear their home language before nursery may go through a quiet period when they start in an English-speaking setting. They are listening, watching and working out the new language before they feel ready to speak it. This is well recognised among early years practitioners and is not, on its own, a cause for concern.

Schools in England record pupils who have English as an additional language (EAL). From my side of the classroom, it helps a great deal when parents tell staff which languages a child speaks, which one is strongest, and a few familiar words in the home language. Even a list of words for “toilet”, “drink”, “home” and “mummy” or “papa” can make a child’s first weeks easier.

Ask the school how they support EAL learners. Good practice includes visual supports, pairing children with a buddy, valuing the home language in class, and giving time for English to develop. If you want to know more about how teachers approach this, Teaching English to Young Learners covers some of the classroom side.

Older children who stop speaking the home language

It is very common for children to start answering only in English once school becomes the centre of their social world. This can feel painful for parents and grandparents.

Pressure and correction usually make things worse. What tends to help is making the language useful and enjoyable: films, music, games, trips to see family, or a role helping a younger cousin. Teenagers often rediscover a home language later, especially if understanding has been kept alive.

When to get help

Contact your health visitor, GP or your child’s nursery or school SENCO if your child:

• is not babbling, pointing or using any words in any language by the ages you would expect
• seems to have difficulty understanding in their home language as well as in English
• loses words or skills they previously had
• is very hard to understand in both languages by around three and a half

Ask for any assessment to consider both languages, ideally with an interpreter or a bilingual therapist. You can read about typical stages in Language Development Milestones from 0 to 5.

Further reading

• Byers-Heinlein, K. and Lew-Williams, C. (2013). Bilingualism in the early years: what the science says. LEARNing Landscapes, 7(1), 95-112.
• Pearson, B. Z., Fernández, S. C. and Oller, D. K. (1993). Lexical development in bilingual infants and toddlers: comparison to monolingual norms. Language Learning, 43(1), 93-120.
• Paap, K. R. and Greenberg, Z. I. (2013). There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing. Cognitive Psychology, 66(2), 232-258.
• Stow, C. and Pert, S. SLT Assessment and Intervention: Best Practice for Children and Young People in Bilingual Settings. Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.
• Paradis, J., Genesee, F. and Crago, M. B. (2011). Dual Language Development and Disorders: A Handbook on Bilingualism and Second Language Learning. 2nd edn. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

Cover image: Photo by Liana Mikah on Unsplash.